8.2.17

The voters of Cornwall will soon (May 4th) be going to the polls to elect 123 unitary councillors (and hundreds of town and parish councillors) to serve the people of Cornwall for the next four years.

A number of Mebyon Kernow candidates have already been selected, and we are grateful for their commitment to standing up for Cornwall. Many more people who are unable to be candidates have pledged to help others with their campaigns, and we are also grateful for their promises of help.

But we need more people to put themselves forward as MK candidates, so that a greater number of people have the opportunity to vote MK in May. If you live in Cornwall and might be willing to stand, please give us a call to find out more.

For Mid Cornwall, ring Cllr Dick Cole on 07791 876607.

For North and East Cornwall, ring Cllr Andrew Long on 07812 597257.

For West Cornwall, ring Cllr Loveday Jenkin on 07718 763566.

Please consider what you might be able to do in the next few weeks to promote MK and hopefully increase our overall number of candidates.

16.1.17

On the face of it Cornwall Reports seems to be a very interesting idea but if I have a doubt it's due to the principle name attached to the project. My concerns about Graham Smith have been spelt out elsewhere (click here), they don't need to be repeated here.

What can be added however is a little detail that came to mind on reading his name. Once, in a pique with Mebyon Kernow, Smith, on his impartial BBC blog, quoted George Orwell on nationalism - the objective being undoubtedly to paint MK as evil nationalists. The irony! An employee of a state-controlled media mouthpiece quoting George 'Big Brother' Orwell in an
attack on a small political movement that defends the rights of a
dissenting minority. When this was pointed out on his blog no response was forthcoming.

A thought for the day: Perhaps if Mr Smith, the Labour party and a long list of others had spent more of their time examining and taking apart the arguments of the Anglo-British nationalist and xenophobic UKIP rather than focusing their attention on the likes of MK, Plaid and the SNP (competitors with Labour) we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.

Anyway, what they have to say for themselves can be found below. Should they be awarded the benefit of the doubt? I suppose so.

Cornwall Reports is a project to reinvent journalism. It is part of a
mission to re-establish the primacy of rationalism and objective facts,
using technology to finance the gathering and dissemination of news.
Like the pamphleteers of the 17th and 18th centuries, Cornwall Reports seeks to make a fundamental contribution to democracy.

The premise is that as technology lowers production costs, so the
value of media reduces, finally, to that of its content alone. The
ambition of Cornwall Reports is to eventually produce content which is
financed entirely by its consumers. In short, you will pay for only
what you read, without the hidden costs of adverts, pop-ups, surveys and
clickbait. Cornwall Reports is just journalism, pure and simple.

In the 21st century, the Cornwall Reports project will
have to challenge the might of global publishing giants such as Facebook
and Google – which today effectively act as gatekeepers to almost every
digital word read online. Cornwall Reports must therefore fight an
asymmetrical war in which size alone does not matter.

The business plan calls for Cornwall Reports to build a brand
identity free of advertising (the growing prevalence of ad-blocking
software already poses a severe threat to conventional online news
media) and ultimately to make its content invisible to search engines.

Cornwall Reports becomes viable as an ad-free online newspaper once
it has 1,000 subscribers. The sooner that day comes, the better – we
estimate about one year. If you would be willing to be among the
founding subscribers, and would like to take advantage of the rewards
that includes, then please email theboss@cornwallreports.co.uk and we will get in touch.

11.1.17

Bauman's legacy | openDemocracy: Zygmunt knew that we don’t die wishing we owned a bigger television, but longing for more time to be with the people we love, doing things we love doing. It is how he would have died.

10.1.17

The Cornish countryside is disappearing at an alarming rate. Our landscapes are being degraded and urbanised and the character of our towns and villages is changing forever. Tranquility, the environment and our heritage are ruthlessly ignored. Our young people are finding it more and more difficult to find an affordable home yet, meanwhile, housing continues to be sold off as second 'homes'. Our hospitals and schools cannot cope and our roads are ever more congested. Unfortunately, Cornwall Council seems determined to ramp up housing and population growth even more.

There has to be a better way. But to change the actions of the Council, we have to change the actions of the Councillors.

We will be calling on candidates seeking election to Cornwall Council in May 2017 to sign up to the four pledges of a Charter for Cornwall.
* reduce Cornwall Council's excessive housing targets and put local needs first

5.1.17

There was much critique by speakers of the centralized nation-state. Especially the way in which the form the nation-state takes erodes and assimilates the colorful diversity of society through engineering the creation of a singular language, culture, and nation. In the same vein, speakers lauded the importance of democratic confederalism as a model, put into practice in Rojava, which nourishes and protects each ethnic and religious group within its system. In this context, there was also an emphasis on the ecological pillar of democratic confederalism, described as a way of encompassing each unique aspect of the various languages, cultures, religions, and peoples present in Rojava. As Sînam Mohammed, European Representative of the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava, simply stated: “Our aim is to bring about unity in diversity.”

20.12.16

There are many small indy/devolutionist/advocacy parties in England (MK in Cornwall, Yorkshire First, NEP, Wessex Regionalists etc) trying to gain traction for progressive, decentralist policies. Such groups should be supported by Scottish democrats just as much as PC in Wales. Yes, they might not be that significant in size, but neither was the SNP at one time.

On 18 April 2015, a Savosian delegation travelled to Brittany to meet with the representatives of the KAD (Kelc’h And Dael, meaning Circle of the Parliament), a Breton entity which aims at recreating a Parliament of Brittany, and sign a union agreement within the Association des Nations de l’Hexagone (Association of Nations of the Hexagon, ANH). This association aims to unite the various peoples of France and work for the recognition of national or ethnic minorities, in accordance with the 1995 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorites and the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 18 December 1992. ANH also struggles for these minorities' right to self-determination.

ANH was founded in order to promote cultural and economic links between the regions, and the overall multicultural richness, of France. Among its objectives are the following: promoting the recognition of minority languages, creating symbolic pairings between cities of each region, and promoting regional think tanks.

The presidents of the Savosian and Breton sections of ANH, Fabrice Dugerdil and Stéphane Domagala, have co-signed a mutual union agreement for the obtaining of the status of minority for their peoples, in accordance with the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.

Meanwhile, ANH has been working on the opening of a music department within the association. ANH President Stéphane Domagala has met with the famous Breton band Manau, which has expressed its support to ANH. ANH is now planning to contact more artists willing to represent their minorities and promote their culture, whether Alsatian, Basque or Savosian, in order to put in place a music festival bringing all these peoples together.

ANH has also opening a sports department, joined by the Ninjutsu Club of Saint Brieuc. The association is now wishes to diversify the sports represented and aims at putting in place a championiship with teams representing their minorities.

From the myth of the methane princess to a reflection of Cornwall's rich history of radiocommunications, his home county permeates the music of Richard D James far more than as a cultural backwater, says Laura Snapes.

21.11.16

Do we want to be part of a devonwall run by the likes of South West Water? Or do we want a Cornwall run by people who live and work here in Cornwall, people who put its communities first? The answer seems obvious.

A very pertinent question to be found in blog 4 of a series about Devonwall being developed by Bernard Deacons on his website. Read the first here.

As the world gets smaller and smaller with globalisation and the spread
of ever-increasing forms of communication, we have never been more
connected. We have more information at our fingertips and more
opportunities for collaboration and common action than ever before.
Campaigns such as “Black Lives Matter” show how rights activists now
have more tools and spaces at their disposal for creating awareness
around issues of discrimination and bringing dozens of organisations and
millions of people together around a common cause. This provides
fertile ground for building a real convergence of struggles across
anti-discrimination movements, but that also requires us to align our
priorities and question and change our way of doing things.